With a huge amount of great podcast apps for iOS out there, people tend to primarily listen to their favorite shows on their iOS devices. If you want to listen to your shows on your Computer, you can listen to them on the publisher’s site which doesn’t offer any sync features or saving of play position if you happen to close the site or have to leave. You can also use iTunes which can also be a problem if you don’t have it installed on the machine you’re currently using and just want to listen to (or finish) the exciting conversation they were just having.
Of course you can also install some of the apps who have Mac versions – but we’ve all heard of the issues some people[1] were having with either syncing play position, updating the played episodes, or even messing with your subscriptions. And that’s not only the case for third party apps, it also happens with iTunes.

"Today I’m rolling out a beta version of website integration for Pod Wrangler right on feedwrangler.net. You can now listen to your podcasts from within any modern browser. Playback position is synced up with Pod Wrangler so you shouldn’t need to fuss with finding your place. This works great for finishing off that episode you were listening to on your drive into work or in a context when you just can’t use your iPhone."

As he points out the website version is in beta because it doesn’t have the functions the final version will have. He also mentions that the beta is currently only available to full Feed Wrangler members and that he’s thinking about how to deal with Pod Wrangler’s “in-app upgraders”.[2]

The NOT-A-REVIEW part – just a notice for users!

I tested the sync and play postitions with different shows and episodes (to test the different feed services) and have to say that it’s pretty reliable when syncing from iOS to the web, but it didn’t work the other way around[3]. As it’s not syncing on its own for now it means that you have to pull to refresh on the iOS version before going to the episode on the website.

Strangely enough for some people the syncing mechanism sometimes just works, while others don’t get it work at all. ↩

Pod Wrangler comes as a free app on the App Store and lets you subscribe to up to 5 shows, with in-app purchase unlocking unlimited subscriptions. ↩

If you take it precisely, “Mr. Underscore” never mentions anything about the web syncing back to iOS. He just talks about finishing the current show after your commute, your run or doing your chores. That’s reading between the lines, folks – and of course I’m kiding. ↩